Alexander Rojavin ’20, Law and Public Policy Scholar
Alexander Rojavin is a multilingual intelligence, media, and policy analyst specializing in information warfare. He is currently working on a book on modern Russian cinema as a key battlefield in the Kremlin’s information war. He is also co-chair of the Symposium on Disinformation Studies. In his spare time, he moonlights as a published literary translator (Routledge, Slavica Publishers, forthcoming Academic Studies Press).
What follows is a chronicle of key events, trends, and anomalies from day 189 through day 195 of the Russian-Ukrainian war for democracy.
This report summarizes the military situation across Ukraine, Ukraine’s politics and efforts in the information war, Russia’s politics and efforts in the information war, and developments elsewhere in Europe.
What Does it Mean When “This Doesn’t Matter?”
The last week has again seen increased chatter about pseudo-referenda. Russia might hold a referendum in Kherson, Russia might hold a referendum in the east, yada-yada, referenda are everywhere. My response to talk of any Russian “referendum” on Ukrainian territory has always been singular.
It. Doesn’t. Matter.
What does this flippancy mean? How could it not matter if Russia stages and/or publishes the made-up results of an artificial referendum in order to put up a veneer of legitimacy for its war effort? Wouldn’t such a referendum be an important inflection point in the war? Doesn’t such a brazen violation of national and international law and international norms matter?
Yes, it matters in the sense that it would be outrageous (and entirely foreseeable—outrage and predictability are not mutually exclusive; some things can and should be both unsurprising and outrageous), it would be yet another example of the Kremlin’s cynical, scofflaw nature and inability to be a part of the civilized world.
But what I mean when I say that it doesn’t matter is this: it doesn’t significantly change the overall calculus in Russia’s favor.
Would it be outrageous? Yes. Would it be predictable? Yes. Would talking heads and pundits race to discuss its significance? Absolutely. But it wouldn’t matter—it wouldn’t shift the balance of the war towards Russia. If anything, staging a pseudo-referendum would be an own-goal.
When evaluating a development’s significance, one must analyze it from a variety of perspectives. The question that one must always ask is: “What effect will this have?” For what purpose is something being done? As a small exercise, let us do so—let us imagine that Russia holds a pseudo-referendum in one of the cities is temporarily occupies. What effect would this have?
How would it affect the military side of things? It wouldn’t. Ukraine’s counter-offensive plans would not alter a hair. The Kremlin’s declaring an occupied territory its own republic or part of Russia would do nothing to deter Kyiv’s designs. If anything, a pseudo-referendum would only work against Russia because Ukrainian forces’ morale would almost certainly increase, as they would become even more resolved to liberate their territories.
What effect would it have on the international community? Nobody (discounting maybe Syria, Iran, Venezuela—the usual suspects) would acknowledge the “referendum” as legitimate. Almost unanimous condemnation. And it would likely accelerate subsequent international sanctions. So, politically, a pseudo-referendum would accomplish nothing but further isolation, and economically, it would hasten Russia’s ruin.
What about domestically? Sure, those who are still on the Kremlin’s IV drip of disinformation would view this as a long-awaited indicator of Russia’s glorious success in the lands of the Ukrainian warlock-fascists, but these are the same people who genuinely believe the Defense Ministry every time it declares that the same village has been conquered for the fourteenth time in a row (see the section below on Russian politics). This segment of the population would have its rage further stoked, and perhaps some others would be convinced that “progress” is being made in Ukraine—but there are easier and less politically and economically costly ways of doing so.
And in the information war? Well, this would give the Kremlin “legal” cover to say that Russian territories are being attacked by Ukrainian forces, which is the one condition that the Kremlin earlier said is a prerequisite for the use of nuclear weapons. But the Kremlin junta, for all its idiocy, has never been irrational—its warped logic may seem that way to the onlooker, but the junta has always operated within the internal logic of its own criminal, might-makes-right worldview—and has never had a desire to be locked in nuclear combat, so there’s no utility on this front either. The Kremlin’s mouthpieces internationally would have a little more ammo, but again—at what cost?
So what effect would a pseudo-referendum have? Would it matter? No, it wouldn’t matter.
When Western media or officials seriously engage—especially repeatedly engage—with the possibility of a “referendum,” it legitimizes it. If I were to write “Pennsylvania secedes from the United States” in crayon and publish a photo of it on social media, it would have as much legitimacy as any “referendum” that the Kremlin “conducts” in an occupied territory. Engaging in good faith or treating seriously something that is as transparently illegitimate or done in bad faith as a Kremlin-conducted “referendum” only legitimizes the Kremlin as a good-faith actor (much as when Western politicians give interviews to “news” outlets controlled by authoritarian regimes), weakens our own position in the information war, and misleads audience members who may not be as informed about the nuances of geopolitics. Any put-on outrage or cynical call for “legitimacy” and “fair treatment” by the Kremlin must only be met with ridicule and mockery—or else be memed into oblivion, a strategy adopted by the fellas of NAFO (see the section below on Ukrainian politics), who are among the few who actually understand how to counter an authoritarian regime’s unfiltered bullshit.
We must always ask the question “for what purpose?” What effect(s) will this have—on a variety of audiences across a variety of fronts? And when we do, things that may have seemed impenetrable or frightening before become less so.
Situation in Ukraine’s South
Russian daily losses spiked precipitously after August 29, with most of the new losses coming from the south. Whereas before, Ukraine’s official tally typically yielded between 100 and 200 slain Russian soldiers daily, after August 29, the standard daily number became 350, even reaching 450 on September 3. The Ukrainian advance is markedly different from that of the Russians: rather than recklessly pressing forward, sacrificing thousands of their own soldiers to overwhelm the adversary with flesh and bone, Ukrainians are employing higher quality heavy artillery to critically disrupt Russian logistics and C2 capabilities, and then advance once the demoralized Russian troops retreat from their compromised positions.
By all appearances, Russian air defenses in the south have been decimated, as Ukraine’s air forces are hitting targets practically unmolested. On September 1, Ukraine’s military pilots executed 22 air strikes in Kherson Oblast’, 24 more on September 2, and over 30 on September 5. Ukrainian forces also continue striking at the Russians’ already weakened logistics, keeping all the crossings across the Dnipro impassable and systematically destroying supply depots and command centers—including in the city of Kherson itself. As Oleksiy Arestovych has repeated in the last few daily chats with Mark Feygin: “Our job is simple: uncover [a Russian depot, base, or grouping] and hit it. Uncover and hit, uncover and hit, uncover and hit.” As he explained, though Russia still enjoys an advantage in numbers across the board, Ukraine’s advantage is technological superiority and far better intelligence work. Commenting on the overall character of the war, he highlighted a key difference between the Russian and Ukrainian armies: Ukraine’s armed forces are innately excellent improvisers, but are rapidly being forced to learn discipline, while Russia’s armed forces always excelled at rigidly following orders, but were never particularly adaptable. The course of the war has been—and will in large part be—a function of how the two armies work to ameliorate their respective weaknesses, with the Ukrainians’ rapidly augmenting their flexibility with order and the Russians’ trying to undo centuries of military tradition and learning how to improvise.
Elsewhere, the occupying forces in Melitopol’ continue to be beleaguered. Though columns of Russian equipment and forces are passing through Melitopol’, both en route to Kherson and en route east toward Berdyansk, Russian rallying points in the area are being destroyed one after another. On August 31, ten explosions sounded south of the city in an area where Russian forces tried to concentrate their equipment out of the Ukrainian forces’ range. On September 2, a strike against Russian stockpiles in the city itself resulted in detonations that lasted for hours. On September 3, five more explosions sounded at the city’s Russian-controlled air base. And speaking of Berdyansk: partisans are at work there too now, having blown up a Russian administrative center on August 31.
Russian air defenses in Crimea have also found no reprieve, with pesky Ukrainian drones popping up at inconvenient times, as on September 3. In a solicitation of intel and a show of confidence, Ukrainian intelligence is openly imploring Crimeans to provide info on where Russian soldiers on the archipelago live and are being deployed.
On September 4, open sources presaged what President Zelensky would later announce in the evening: three settlements—two, including Vysokopillya, in the south, and Ozerne in the country’s east—had been liberated.
Situation in Ukraine’s East
As Putin has given the order to capture Donetsk Oblast’ by September 15, fighting in the east has intensified also, despite the fact that the Russian groupings there are boasting 10% of their original numbers and that 40% of the equipment that new Russian units are getting is defective. Though the aforementioned spike in Russian losses is driven primarily by Ukrainian activity in the south, Russia’s redoubled attempts in the east are contributing a fair share also: governor of Luhansk Oblast’ Serhiy Gaidai, for example, snidely commented that “something has been going on” in Kreminna for the last few days, with some 300 Russian troops meeting their end there. He subsequently reported on September 6 that Ukrainian forces have actually made up a little bit of ground in Luhansk Oblast’, advancing a few hundred meters and fortifying their new positions.
Per Oleg Zhdanov, a highly reliable Ukrainian military analyst, part of the reason for the Russians’ renewed push may be their indisputable need to capture Slovyansk, which they need to distribute water in the occupied territories and without which their winter will be even worse than it is already slated to be.
Of course, a central element of the Russian forces’ attempted offensive is the bombing of civilian targets: for example, mass shelling of Kharkiv Oblast’ on September 1 destroyed 60 civilian objects, and on September 4, Russian forces shelled eleven settlements across Donetsk Oblast’, killing four civilians in the region in one day. Nevertheless, Ukraine’s air defense capabilities, while imperfect, are improving: on September 3, five Kalibr missiles flew at Dnipro at night, and all five were shot down.
Ukrainian Politics and Activity in the Information War
Meanwhile, the online community has finally birthed an effective counter-disinformation force at scale: the rapidly growing force of fellas (of NAFO, the North Atlantic Fellas Organization), which is doing what the West’s information forces should have been doing for years: one does not combat the Kremlin’s disinformation (only or even predominantly) with facts. One combats it by neutering it with memes, and Ukraine’s administration understands this, with Defense Minister Reznikov changing his Twitter avatar to an appropriately dressed fella. The vaccine to nonsensical disinformation is a fortified information space, which consists of preventative media literacy education, a robust fourth estate, and effective regulation, among other elements—but the serum lies in memes.
Russian Politics and Activity in the Information War
In a landmark development, news dropped on August 31 that the National Republican Army (a Russian partisan organization—the one that took responsibility for killing Dugina) and the Freedom of Russia Legion have signed a formal document declaring their cooperation in the effort to “liberate Russia from Putin’s tyranny, stop the Kremlin’s terror against citizens of Russia and other countries, and to cease the war against Ukraine as quickly as possible.” The document establishes a coordinating center for the groups, which will be headed by Ilya Ponomaryov, who, along with Mark Feygin, has been the most sober-minded Russia proponent of the need for Russia’s opposition to ready themselves for armed conflict against the Kremlin. This union and the clear designation of Ponomaryov as its leader signifies that the armed Russian opposition finally has political representation—it has a face, an alternative for the leadership of Russia in the Kremlin junta’s stead. This is a critical and long-overdue step for the opposition, and while it may not bear geopolitical fruit immediately, this breathes explicit political viability into a military movement that could not have succeeded on its own.
This development is in contrast with the better-known Russian opposition in exile, whose utter fecklessness has been laid bare by this war. This opposition’s dithering was on display at the latest meeting of the Free Russia Congress in Vilnius, which concluded on September 2. At the Congress, that branch of the opposition spent its time daydreaming about the post-Putin Russia of the future, explaining that not all Russians are to blame for the war, and protesting against the limitations on E.U. visas because such limitations would affect some opposition members too.
While Russia’s armed opposition is consolidating, the Kremlin itself finds itself in something of a dead end. Last week, The Insider published an investigative report delineating how Russia will run out of most shells, artillery, and armored vehicles by year’s end. The Defense Ministry’s strategy in the information war has, unsurprisingly, not changed a whit: on September 2, everyone’s favorite Defense Ministry spokesman Konashenkov declared that Russian forces have destroyed an eye-popping 44 HIMARS (i.e. dozens more than Ukraine has had up to this point), and on September 3, Shoigu announced that Russian forces have captured Peski, making it the fourth capture of Peski in a month and the eighth capture of Peski overall. Then, on September 6, Russian media alleged that they’ve already destroyed an M2 Bradley and some Leopards in Ukraine—a frightful assertion made less so by the fact that these vehicles aren’t even in Ukraine yet.
Other major developments in Russia from the past week included: (1) the first mysterious death of another prominent Russian businessman in months, when the head of Lukoil’s board of directors died after falling six floors from the window of the hospital at which he was being treated, and (2) the death and burial of Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, the symbolism of whose passing lends itself to a broad array of interpretations.
Lastly and very importantly: the tendrils of mobilization have finally reached Russians from Moscow and Leningrad Oblast’s. Inhabitants of the main metropoli are being summoned to war—particularly, to defend Crimea. The Russian populace is notoriously, historically inert, and the past six months have failed to make them stir from their archetypical crèche of fear, indifference, and disorganization. But history has repeatedly shown that every authoritarian regime goes too far, and even the most inert of citizenries has a breaking point. The covert mobilization of the capital’s inhabitants brings us one step closer to that breaking point.
Elsewhere in Europe
The past week saw the heated diplomatic battle over what to do about visas for Russians continue. The E.U. Foreign Minister Borrell still resists the idea of a blanket tourist visa ban, and prolonged inaction prompted the Baltic states, Poland, and Finland to threaten “national measures” on the matter if the E.U. does not act as one. Nevertheless, on August 31, marking some progress, the foreign ministers of E.U. member states did agree to suspend the simplified issuance of visas to Russians.
On September 4, a 70,000-person protest took place in Prague, where the protesters, organized by Kremlin-aligned Czech powers, demanded renewed energy ties with Russia, a cessation to military aid for Ukraine, neutrality in the war, the deportation of all UA refugees, and the resignation of Prime Minister Petr Fiala’s government, all while chanting unkind things about the E.U. and NATO.